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Communication, Culture & Critique ISSN 1753-9129

O R I G I N A L A R T I C L E

Activist Journalism: Using Digital

Technologies and Undermining StructuresTamar Ashuri

Department of Communication Studies, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel

School of Communication, Sapir College, D.N. Hof Ashkelon, Israel

This article explores how human interactions with networked technologies enable and

constrain the emergence of social structures that nourish public knowledge and experience.

By adapting Anthony Giddens (1984) Structuration Theory and extending its perspectiveto technology (W. J. Orlikowski, 2000), the study endeavors to examine the manner in which

engagement with networked technologies by people outside mainstream news organizations

reproduces structures that neutralize the power of media institutions to construct social

reality, as well as the manner in which their actions simultaneously produce new social

structures (N. Couldry, 2000). The study is grounded in analysis of the online activities of

members of Machsom Watch a womens organization that monitors the human rights of

Palestinians at checkpoints set up by the Israeli army.

doi:10.1111/j.1753-9137.2011.01116.x

As technology and the journalistic environment undergo dramatic changes in form,

function, and artifacts, researchers have displayed increasing interest in technological

innovations and their impact on the journalistic arena and the content it produces

and disseminates (Domingo et al., 2011; Fenton, 2009; Stuart, 2006).

This article examines the contemporary journalism environment, exploring

how human interactions with digital communication technologies both enable and

constrain the emergence of new social structures that nourish public knowledge and

experience. I suggest that the emerging new structures facilitate public visibility of a

marginalized social reality, in particular that of suffering and pain. I also maintain

that while such representations help establish an environment for moral engagement

of the relevant suffering, they also reinforce the structures that hinder this practice

(Boltanski, 1999).

The study will be predicated on Anthony Giddens (1984) Structuration Theory,

devised to resolve a fundamental division within the social sciences concerning the

Corresponding author: Tamar Ashuri; e-mail: [email protected]

38 Communication, Culture & Critique 5 (2012) 3856 2012 International Communication Association

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T. Ashuri Activist Journalism

classic agent/structure dichotomy. It will also draw on works in the fields of informa-

tion systems and organizational studies that extended the structuration perspective

and explored the complex ways in which new technologies (notably information

communication technologies) were implemented in organizations. Building on such

works, particularly Wanda Orlikowskis Duality of Technology model (Orlikowski,

1992, 2000), the study considers the manner in which journalists (operating outside

media organizations) and the digital networked technologies they employ combine

in unpredictable ways to construct public visibility of social reality (Couldry, 2000).

In adopting the structuration perspective, the study also aims at addressing tradi-

tional differentiation among media studies, which tend to prioritize either structure

(mostly from within the political economy) or agency (normally situated in cultural

studies). This integrative approach will permitas well as depart fromthe cus-

tomary distinction in communication studies between so-called audience research

(that stresses the independence of individual agents) and its ostensible opposite,production studies, that tend to highlight the power of media institutions and

the structures built into them and maintained by them. Moving beyond production

settings, texts, and audience interpretation and focusing instead on media-oriented

practice (Couldry, 2004), I explore how individuals that operate outside media

organizations interact with media institutions in unpredictable ways.

Research will be grounded in analysis of the online activities of members of

one organization known as Machsom [Hebrew: Checkpoint] Watcha womens

organization whose membersmonitor thehuman rightsof Palestinians at checkpoints

set up by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Members of the group are present at the

checkpoints on a daily basis, recording events and then publishing their reports ontheir website, designed expressly for this purpose. Examining members activities

on the organizations website, I demonstrate that by enacting1 digital platforms,

the group challenges the mainstream news organizations power to construct public

visibility of social reality but simultaneously supports the structures that hinder

such activities by legitimizing the news organizations conventional practices and

naturalizing their representations.

Media and public visibility of realityIn his book Media and Modernity (1995), John Thompson argued that with the

proliferation of modern media (e.g., the printing press and broadcast media), a

publicness of a new sort was created, made up of all that was visible to the

publicthe activities and events that the public was able to see or hear about.

According to Thompson (1995), mediated publicnessthe visibility of events

occurring outside the temporal and geographic sphere of the consumer publicwas

made possible in the early modern era primarily by agents, who testified in public

space about events that they witnessed and thereby rendered the events visible, that

is, public.

Communication, Culture & Critique 5 (2012) 3856 2012 International Communication Association 39

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Activist Journalism T. Ashuri

Toward the beginning of the 19th century, a division of labor emerged and these

witnessing agents were transformed into salaried workers. Appointed either directly

or indirectly by private and/or public employers, such professional witnesses were in

charge of defining, allocating, and displacing slices of reality for the public in the

public space.

Journalists were perceived as crucial players among the various agents responsible

for creating public visibility of slices of reality (Schudson, 1978, 2001; Thompson,

1995). In this context, it has been shown that the modern-day news journalist

functions as a witness to events that s/he sees: The journalist is present at the event,

observes it, and then testifies about it in public arenas before an audience that was

not there itself (Fenton, 2009).

Many scholars note, however, that although news journalists do enhance public

visibility of slices of reality, they are employed by media owners as a means of

generating profits and thus usually function as gatekeepers of symbolic content whotend to favor public visibility of the hegemonic/official position on issues (Gamson

& Modigliani, 1989; Ryan, 2004; Schudson, 1978).

In recent years, numerous researchers have shown that this one-to-many, top-

down journalism environment is undergoing a fundamental transformation. They

note social and economic upheavals among the factors responsible, but the key reason

cited is the changing nature of technology, which is purported to impact directly on

the practice of journalism and access thereunto (Beckett & Mansell, 2008; Fenton,

2009). It has been suggested that the unique role journalists play in the construction

of mediated publicness is being challenged by different news sources (at times

nonprofessional agents) using various media, who penetrate the journalistic arenaand change the nature of deliberation and action in the public sphere (Jarvis, 2007;

Thurman, 2008).

One of the central issues in this discourse was a critical assessment of the model of

the objective journalist. Research showed that, alongside conventional journalism

that idealizes objectivity, a new kind of journalism was and still is developing with

a different aim: to make a marginalized reality visible and thereby change this

reality (Downing, 2003). Scholars emphasized that journalists operating in this new

environment are retreating from the objective model, in which the journalist

obscures or even fully conceals personal views, and adopting instead the advocacy

model, based on presenting a personal and value-laden judgment of the reportedevent. They argued that, like the objective journalist, the advocate journalist testifies in

the public space about events witnessed firsthand, but unlike the objective journalist,

the goal of the advocate journalist is to change the reality by making it public.

The online performance of such social/political activists was examined in this

context (Dahlberg, 2007; Domingo et al., 2011; Downey & Fenton, 2003; Kahn

& Kellner, 2005). It has been argued that the Internet provides platforms that

promote and nourish social activism (Atton, 2003, 2004; Bennett, 2003; Downing,

2003; Platon & Deuze, 2003). One prominent example involves the websites of

Indymedia, a network of independent online media centers that originated during


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the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 and was used to spread the social and

political agenda of the protesters, providing coverage of their campaign. Reports of

the demonstrations in the streets of Seattle were sent out live over the Internet to

audiences worldwide. The reporters, who were the activists themselves, functioned

as de facto journalists, using video and still photography to record their experiences.

While the traditional mainstream media portrayed the protesters in a negative light

(as a band of law-breaking anarchists), the activist-journalists framed their own

reporting of events online in a manner that showcased their viewpoint and agenda.

This campaign, organized, coordinated and reported online by activists, became a

model for activists worldwide, who similarly adopted the Internet as their principal

medium for reporting on events (Bennett, 2003). Below, I elucidate the technological

developments considered particularly conducive to this upheaval.

Unlike journalists working in traditional media, people who report news primar-

ily via digital networked platforms require no professional training; online contentdistribution demands only minimal skills (Atton, 2003; Klein, 1999). As such, indi-

viduals may distribute news content directly, bearing witness to personal knowledge

and experiences, with no professional mediation or dependence on an organizational

hierarchy. These features have facilitated the emergence of spaces for alternative dis-

course that are normally ignored by established media operating within the consensus

(Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Ryan, 2004).

Studies indicate, moreover, that start-up costs for news media now approach zero,

and nationwide 24-hour television stations can be set up for a few hundred thousand

dollars (Beckett & Mansell, 2008; Gordon, 2007). Running costs are generally much

lower than for traditional news production, as everything from licenses to camera

technology is becoming cheaper. In earlier times, there was only one platform

for news, while today individual journalists and news organizations have access to

multiple outlets. Consequently, news organizations, which once enjoyed exclusivity

in certain markets, now must cope with competition from nonprofessional sources.

As such, the traditional news media are beginning to see their profit margins squeezed

somewhat (Beckett & Mansell, 2008).

Critics also noted that these developments intensified recently as a result of a

combination of digital compression advances, market liberalization, and deregulation

policiesmacroprocesses that shift the news media in the direction of consumer-ledindustries. Instead of waiting for the news to be delivered at specific times, consumers

may now access it at any time from any location via broadcast channels and/or

websites (Jarvis, 2007). Because consumers benefit from so much choice, editors,

producers, and journalists are more inclined to respond to their perceived needs

and demands. To survive, they must adjust to the rise of new news resources and

introduce the attendant major transformations in their work environments.

These environmental changes attracted considerable academic attention, with

scholars investigating news production processes in an attempt to identify the nature

and characteristics of newsmaking in the digital era and to determine how the new


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production processes manifest themselves in the construction of public visibility of

social reality.

Two principal approaches typify the existing body of literature. The first scholarly

trend focuseson the ways in which human agents use newtechnologies and the impact

of the relevant media on editorial actions and decisions (Boczkowski, 2004; Pavlik,

2001). Concentrating on the manner in which peoples adaptations of new networked

technologies impact news contents, one critic suggested that mobile phone usage

is contributing to the public sphere and in some instances is circumventing official

repression or inadequate information (Gordon, 2007, p. 307). In another study on

mobile phone use, Anna Reading (2011) discussed the ways in which Iranian activists

affected public knowledge of events by capturing images of a young Iranian woman,

Neda Agha-Soltan, who was shot dead during the Iranian elections in 2009.

These observations on transformation of the journalism environment by human

agents who utilize new technology were critically scrutinized by scholars, whounderscored the structural aspects of news production. Proponents of this view

pointed to structural forms such as norms, habits, economic constraints, and

the like, that hinder adoption of new technologies by human agents andby

implication new news content. As Becket and Mansell (2008, p. 94) noted:

Although the traditional news media have provided platforms or spaces for

public debate historically, they continue to be limited in the sense that there is

relatively little incentive for openness and innovation.

Such hypotheses were reinforced in empirical works, with critics concluding

that the adaptation of new media in traditional media organizationsand of newnews sourcesis slow, and the structures embedded in the technology and in the

organizations are being reproduced (Reich, 2008; Wardle & Williams, 2010).

In this study, I aim to challenge this scholarly divide, which tends to prioritize

(explicitly or nonexplicitly) structure or agency by bridging the two perspectives

dominating the literature on this issue. Instead of inquiring whether and how

new technologies facilitate transformations in the journalistic environment, I ask

which social structures emerge when newsmakers (professional and nonprofessional

journalists2) interact recurrently with whatever properties of the new technologies

are at hand. I believe that this integrative approach can better explain emergence and

change in media technologies, their use, and the nature of media texts.

Bridging agency/structure approaches

The approach presented below is predicated on Anthony Giddens (1984) duality

of structure concept that attempts to resolve a fundamental division within the

social sciences concerning the classic agency/structure dichotomy. While the so-

called structuralists consider social phenomena to be determined by objective,

exogenous social structures, adherents of the phenomenological and hermeneutic

traditions view them as the product of actions by subjective human agents.


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Giddens endeavors to place a square peg in a round hole by proposing that

structure and agency should not be viewed as independent and conflicting elements,

but as a mutually interactive duality whereby social structures are viewed as both the

medium and result of human activities. Expressed differently, when human agents

carry out their actions, they draw on the existing social structure; human action,

however, also simultaneously produces (and reproduces) social structures. Hence the

structure, according to Giddens, is both enabling and disabling.

In recent years, Giddens Structuration Theory has been enhanced by many

scholars involved in the study of both micro and macrosocial phenomena. This

theory has also helped critics comprehend the manner in which technologies (notably

ICTs) are implemented in institutions. Accordingly, the proposed study will draw on

some of the leading works in this field, particularly on Wanda Orlikowskis Duality

of Technology model (Orlikowski, 1992, 2000).

Orlikowski framed the role of technology in terms of mutual interaction betweenhuman agents and technology, thus declaring it to be structurally and socially

constructed. The practice lens model she proposed enables examination of how

people interacting with a technology in their ongoing practices build structures that

shape their emergent and situated use of that technology. Orlikowski argues that when

human agents carry out actions, they draw on existing social structures, but their

actions also simultaneously produce (and reproduce) social structures. Therefore,

social structures do not merely restrain the actions of human beings but constitute a

resource developed by them that becomes manifest in their actions.

Orlikowskis insights may be divided into the following constituents: (a) tech-

nology is affected only by creative human action; hence, the process of humanengagement with a given technology begins in human actions; (b) human agents

enact3 the technology and do not merely use and/or appropriate it; (c) structures are

not embedded in the technology, but rather emerge as a result of human enactment

with it.

Examining the three-sided interplay among technologies, human agents, and

organizational settings, Orlikowski demonstrated that when acting on technology,

human agents are influenced by theinstitutional properties of their settings, relying on

existing reservoirs of knowledge, resources, rules, norms, and interpretative schemes

to perform their work. She also showed that when agents enact the technology, their

actions impact the institutional properties of their organizations by either reinforcingor transforming them.

This study seeks to extend the scope of Orlikowskis model by addressing aspects

omitted from her useful work. First, Orlikowski considers human enactment with

technology in organizations, but overlooks the activities of agents operating outside

the organizations investigated. In the case of media technologies, this approach

is particularly problematic, as it ignores many instances in which nonmedia

people (Couldry, 2000) interact with media institutions. The political aspect of

human actions is another significant element absent from Orlikowskis study, which

overlooks the manner in which power structures are produced and reproduced by


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human activity. This issue, too, is of special importance for media research, as the

media maintain a unique symbolic power rendering them capable of constructing

social reality (Couldry, 2000; Thompson, 1995). Third, in all cases studied, Orlikowski

indicated how agents enactment with technology produced new structures but did

not examine occurrences in which human activities challenge existing structures,

namely those that alter the status quo instead of preserving it.

Taking these neglected elements into account, my objective is to investigate the

manner in which journalists (operating outside media organizations) and the digital

networked technologies they enact combine with one another in unpredictable ways

to construct public visibility of social reality. The study thus endeavors to shed

new light on how engagements with networked technologies by people outside

media institutions reproduce structures that neutralize the power of mainstream

news organizations to construct social reality and how their actions simultaneously

produce new social structures that challenge existing ones.To achieve this objective, I rely on studies in which several dimensions regarding

themediaspower of constructing socialreality were highlighted, drawing in particular

on Nick Couldrys The Place of Media Power (2000).

Analyzing media power

Couldry (2000) analyzed the power of media organizations in construction of

social reality, focusing on the manner in which individuals operating outside media

organizations interact with media institutions and pointing to several distinct but

interrelated dimensions of media power: framing, ordering, naming, and allocating.In Couldrys conceptualization,framingrefers to the medias role in sustaining the

frame in which experiences of the social occur. Echoing several scholars (Silverstone,

1981), he perceived the media as a defining frame through which whatever is

shared by the public is delineated as separate from what is private and particular.

As mentioned earlier, this observation becomes particularly significant in modern

times, as contemporary communication technologies (especially print and broadcast

media) allow carefully selected individuals and organizations to access the media

field (Ashuri & Pinchevski, 2010) and affect the nature and contents of the frames

created by and in them.

Orderingconcerns the hierarchical implications of the framing function. Couldrynoted the hierarchy between two spheres that are continuously reproduced both

symbolically and in practicethe media world at one end of the spectrum and

the ordinary world at the other. Building on empirical work such as Livingstone

and Lunts study (1994), he argues that the media constantly create a symbolic

boundary between the media world (studios, producers, people who appear in the

media)that is constructed as unique and remarkableand the world of real

people that is perceived as pale and gloomy.

Naming addresses the medias authority as a principal source of social facts,

especially as a provider of an essential flow of information and meanings that enable


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generation of new discursive resources at the societal level through both factual

information and media fictions.

The fourth dimension, allocating, assumes that media organizations maintain the

symbolic boundary between places of media artifact production and consumption,

respectively, wherein practitioners operating in media organizations create symbolic

contents in and by various media (television, the press, radio, etc.) that are then

consumed by the audiences in their own environments. This is particularly important

for news production: Journalists gather social facts, as it were, from the specific

locations in which they occurred. They are then disseminated by the media they

use to audiences absent from those locations. This spatial patterning reinforces the

above-noted symbolic boundary between the world of the media and that of ordinary

people. Thus, a hierarchy is continuously constructed (and maintained) between the

media people who were on location (those who hold the information and hence the

power to represent it) and the audiences that were absent from the locations at whichthe events took place and therefore lack firsthand knowledge regarding them.

To this I add a fifth dimension, timing, which is associated with the role of

media practitioners (notably journalists) in defining the relevance of specific social

facts by locating them on a timeline. The term news embodies this notion. New

events (or events considered to be new) that appear in media frames are those that

either recently took place or that were considered new by the professional mediators

responsible for disseminating them. These definitions of news support the hierar-

chy by which media institutions delineate the newness of a particular reality and

facilitate its public visibility accordingly.

As mentioned earlier, by building on such categories,4 I explore the manner inwhich the medias unique symbolic power to construct social reality is simultaneously

reproduced and challenged by the actions of individual agents. In contrast to the

studies examined, which underscore the ways in which human agents (notably people

operating outside mainstream media institutions) maintain and even reinforce media

power, the present study suggests that media technologies in general and digital

networked platforms in particular constitute spheres in which human agents conduct

various actions that alter the structures limiting their activities. Furthermore, it

posits that in challenging existing structures and creating new ones, the individual

agent operating outside mainstream media institutions facilitates public visibility of

marginalized social reality, specifically realities of suffering and pain.My arguments, as indicated, will be grounded in analysis of a website designed and

maintained by members of an organization known as Machsom Watch [Checkpoint

Watch], which comprises nonprofessional journalists deployed to report occurrences

in the Occupied Territories via digital networked technologies.

Technology in practice enacted by Machsom Watch members

Machsom Watch (henceforth MW) was established in 2001. Its members, all women,

callfor anend to the Israeli occupation and monitor the human rightsof Palestinians at


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checkpoints set up by the IDF. Membersare present at the checkpoints on a daily basis,

recording events and then publishing reports on their website, designed expressly for

this purpose [http://www.machsomwatch.org/].5 Their aim, as stipulated on their

website in the section entitled About Us, is to disclose the nature of everyday reality

for Palestiniansan act that other organizations, in particular mainstream mediainstitutions, do not perform.

Rules and resources

Anthony Giddens (1984) suggests that humans create rules (principles governing

social action) and use resources (raw materials, power) that are only rendered usable

by human action.

In their enactment with their preferred digital platform, that is, the organizations

website, MW activists drew on the sets of these rules and resources available to them:

First, all members are women and define themselves as such. Gender is considered a

crucial resource and only women can post reports to the MW website, as emphasizedtherein (in a section entitled The Beginning): We decided from the outset that men

would not be active observers, for the reasons so often explained: their difficulty in

remaining neutral in relation to military personnel and situations. Also, we were

aware of the disempowerment faced by women in mixed organizations. As the

activists see it, establishing an organization for women only and operating therein

constitute a source of empowerment, enabling these women/witnesses to present

events in public that mixed organizations dominated by men (in particular Israels

mainstream media institutions) usually conceal.

Another resource relates to the rules determined by the Israeli parliament, accord-

ing to which only Israelis are granted (nearly) free access to military checkpoints. As

Israeli citizens, MW members can travel freely in the Occupied Territories, observe

realities at the checkpoints, and later bear witness to these observed events via their

website. They note in About Us:

Legal advice assured us (and its worth remembering) that the army has no right

to prevent citizens from being present in the area of the checkpoint (italics mine).

Women of MW possess yet another significant resource by virtue of their Israeli

citizenship: Their reports are not censored and may thus be disseminated in the

public domain, in this case at the website designed for this task. This crucial resourceis buttressed by their writing skills another important resource they manifest. Most

MW members are highly educated and can write eloquent, articulate, and seemingly

persuasive reports in both English and Hebrew.

Building on Giddens (1984) and on Orlikowskis (2000) model, I proceed to

examine the facilities inherent in the Internet that render this digital platform

suitable for promoting and nourishing the goals of the groups members. In About

Us, MW activists summarize their objectives:

Machsom Watch is a movement of Israeli women, peace activists from all sectors

of Israeli society, who oppose the Israeli occupation and the denial of


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Palestinians rights to move freely in their land. Since 2001, we have conducted

daily observations of IDF checkpoints in the West Bank, along the separation

fence and in the seamline zone, on the main roads and on out-of-the-way dirt

roads [. . .]. We regularly document what we see and hear. The reports of these

observations are published on the Machsom Watch site [. . .

].

This statement renders it apparent that the groups aim is to gather information about

incidents of wrongdoing and distress that its members themselves witnessed and to

disseminate information about the suffering caused to Palestiniansthrough and

at their websiteto the public responsible (directly or indirectly) for it. By taking

this act of witnessing upon themselves, the women of MW serve a dual function:

Protecting the rights of the Palestinians and intensifying awareness among the Israeli

public. Their website describes their core activities as follows:

We find ourselves living in a time when alienation, blindness, silencing,racism and militarism spread like an epidemic. Israels political leadership blows

up existential fears to consolidate its rule using constant intimidation. This

is how delegitimizing the other becomes a norm, as law and justice are trampled

underfoot and democracy suffers [. . .]. We are eyewitnesses to more victims of

the Occupation Israeli soldiers, our sons and daughters who are forced to act in

inhuman situations and might pay a steep price of psychological damage. All of

these have a destructive influence upon Israeli society at large, which is becoming

increasingly violent. We have taken it upon ourselves to illuminate these

dark places with our civil eye and inscribe the writing on the wall (italics mine).

And indeed, in their website members of MW reported on clashes at the checkpoints

that were ignored (in many cases) by journalists operating in mainstream media

institutions such as the press and television. For example, in 2 days selected at random

(a detailed discussion is provided in the following pages) 11 reports were posted

on MWs website but no reports of such incidents were found in Israels four main

newspapers (Israel Hayum, MaAriv, Yediot Acharonot, and Haaretz). Nor were

they found in the news bulletins broadcast in the countrys most-watched television

networks (Channel One, Channel Two, and Channel Ten).

The Internets unique features facilitate this task. First, unlike professional

journalists, the agents who use the Internet to store and disseminate reports ofevents they experienced firsthand are not required to have any professional training;

distribution of content online requires only minimal skills and the market entry cost

is low compared to that of other media. The upshot is that individuals can distribute

content directly to their audiences, with no professional mediation, while avoiding

any dependence on an organizational hierarchy or the financial interests of official

organizations and media moguls (Dahlberg, 2007; Downey & Fenton, 2003; Kahn &

Kellner, 2005). In this case, the Internet allows MW members to voice controversial

opinions publicly that challenge conformist ideologies and to advocate their views

despite their marginalization.


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Furthermore, as a low-cost, nonbounded media device, the Internet enables each

member to post her unique testimony regarding the reality she observed at the

checkpoints, using her own style and language. This facility is crucial because in the

act of bearing witness to wrongdoing and suffering, MW members are not out to

expose an objective truth (i.e., to embrace the journalism ethos of objectivity) but

rather to present a personal experience publicly, that is, to expose a personal truth

about the harsh realities in which each of them partakes (Ashuri & Wiesslit, 2011).

In About Us, the activists underscore this feature by flagging the members presence

in time and space in the occurrences reported:

Each checkpoint team visits a number of checkpoints, remaining at each one as

long as necessary to understand and report on what is happening usually a

couple of hours or longer.

The reports they post indeed reflect these objectives, as in the following example:

Qalandiya Checkpoint, Wednesday, May 4, 2011 Afternoon

Observers: Ruthi B., Hanna T. (reporting):

And finally, as always, a small test case proves everything. A group of secular

students, boys and girls together, passes through. We are right behind them, and

while in the check lane having our documents inspected thoroughly, it becomes

clear that one of the young women has been delayed 15 minutes in the internal

room. She is released and emerges with us. Almost in tears. The delay, the fear,

the humiliation.In the above citation, the checkpoints location and time of observation are listed

in the headline, at least one photograph is included, and the observers first name

and initial of surname are provided. But most importantly, the text is written in

first-person mode, with emphasis on the witnesss own deeds and experience. These

choices made by MW members are significant, as they emphasize the personal and

intimate element inherent in the online activity these agents took upon themselves,

as in the following example:

Date: 20 March, 2011, Morning

Observers: Ruthie T., Hasidah S. (reporting)

Jalama Checkpoint 08:30 09:00

At Jalama, the curfew is in effect. No one can enter Israel. We came to get Aya

and her mother but we werent allowed to cross. It turned out they had a permit

that expired yesterday, and the new permit is valid starting tomorrow (!). Aya,

whos four years old, goes to Rambam hospital 4 5 times a week for dialysis, and

they know her at the checkpoint. But the computer says she doesnt have a

permit. We got angry. Yuval Roth (director of the organization Baderekh

LeHakhlama, which transports Palestinian patients to Israeli hospitals) called the


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DCO, Ruthie called the DCOtheyll look into it. Nissim, in charge of the

checkpoints operation, also called the DCO. Aya and her mother received a

temporary, one-time permit on the spot, and we took them to Rambam hospital.

The Internet, unlike a television program or newspaper article, is a nonboundedspace, rendering it a natural environment for individual stories regarding personal

deeds of varying style, language, length, etc. It welcomes detailed and extended

representations of personal accounts, impressions, and analyses, as well as brief and

concise onesthe sort of representations that underlie the journalistic activity of the

group under investigation.

The Internet facilitates the advancement of yet another significant requirement.

It enables MW members to control (and by implication to limit) the reciprocal

characteristics of the digital platform they use. Thus, while each member can store

her reports on the website and disseminate them among mass audiences, members of

the public who are ineligible for membership (men or women soldiers, for example)are disinclined to respond regarding the events presented. This creates a situation in

which eyewitnesses to events at the checkpoints who cannot join the organization

pose no opposition to the views MW members voice in the (virtual) domain they

established.

Significantly, the MW website enables Internet users to access reports in three

waysby subject, timeline, and/or location (checkpoint), thereby employing a

crucial component of the Internet, namely, its asynchronous character. Unlike

mainstream media (such as television and newspapers) that provide linear (and

therefore sequential) reports, websites constitute nonlinear, timeless archives. Assuch, users may be exposed to both new and older reports at any given moment. In

other words, the archival (nonlinear) nature of the Internet facilitates representation

of a routine experience of suffering. This element is important because, unlike

journalists operating in mainstream news organizations that tend to favor new and

exceptional events, MW members seek to highlight the repetitious and mundane

nature of suffering at the checkpoints, as Spotlightnotes:

Through the documentation which discloses the nature ofeverydayreality, we

are attempting to influence public opinion in the country and in the world, and

thus to bring to an end the destructive occupation, which causes damage toIsraeli society as well as to Palestinian society (italics mine).

Finally, unlike traditional media, typified by linear representation of symbolic

content, the Internet allows for nonlinear content consumption. This unique feature

fosters a more active consumption experience in which the consumer of information

also functions as its editor and as such, as its distributor (users may navigate among

the different witnessing texts, download them, compile them, and disseminate them

to others). This results in a sort of partnership in the creation of online content

and promotes MWs goal of having its audience share in the experience of and

responsibility for the wrongdoing and suffering described in the information its


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members have gathered and posted. MW members are motivated to publicize a

marginalized reality of suffering and pain, hoping that the public they address will

assume responsibility, leading to a broader public response that will bring about

palpable change (Ullman, 2006), as the Spotlightsection of their website emphasizes:

Machsom Watch, a movement of women volunteers, has raised a voice in Israeli

discourse, a voice protesting against Occupation and opposing it in a struggle for

human rights.

This hope that a community will someday emerge, hear the testimony, react to

the reality, and even change it guides MW members and lies at the core of their

online activity.

Norms and interpretative scheme

In her practice lens model for studying technology in organizations, WandaOrlikowski refers to the following elements, derived from Giddens categorizations:

[H]uman agents built into technology certain interpretive schemes (rules

reflecting knowledge of the work being automated), certain facilities (resources to

accomplish that work) and certain norms (rules that define the organizationally

sanctioned way of executing that work) (Orlikowski, 1992, p. 410, italics mine).

Building on Orlikowskis model, I show that in their enactment with the relevant

technology, MW members draw on a set of norms concerning the technological means

at hand that are manifested in their online activity and reflected in the interpretative

scheme (Orlikowski, 2000) they generate. The following analysis addresses theabove-outlined dimensions in assessing the medias power to construct social reality:

Framing, ordering, naming allocating, and timing (Ashuri, 2011; Couldry, 2000).

The elementary norm on which MW members draw isframing. They consider it a

moral duty to render an immoral reality visible in the media frame. The organizations

website declares:

Theres an occupation out there, it is vicious and immoral and we need to be

clearly on the side of opposition with no holds barred.

Indeed, MW members commit themselves to what they perceive as a moral act bypublishing information on the suffering that Israeli soldiers inflict on Palestinians at

the checkpoints, thereby exposing the Palestinians private experiences that cry out,

in their view, for public awareness.

MW members apply the orderingnorm as well, perceiving their website as a space

that enables individuals wholike themare situated outside established news

organizations to enter the journalistic arena, as it were, by disseminating knowledge

in the public domain about events they observe firsthand, as explained in About Us:

Each team summarizes observations made during the shift [at the checkpoint]

into a report which is sent to the website forthwith, in both Hebrew and English.


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The website on which their reports on observed realities are posted allows MW

members to challenge the prevailing division of labor, according to which journalists

in established news organizations report on events they observed while the absent

audiences merely consume the disseminated texts. MWs online activities thus help

destabilize the boundaries between the media people (in this case professional jour-

nalists) present at the scene of a given event and the ordinary people who are

absent from it.

Ordering is linked directly with naming. MW members consider their website

an empowering tool because it facilitates dissemination of their reports to mass

audiences, thereby undermining the existing state of affairs in which professional

journalists benefit from exclusive access to social facts (Couldry, 2000), either

by presence at the place they occur or by contacting official sources (the IDF

spokespersons office, for example). By being present on location, observing social

realities and reporting on them in and through digital networked technologies, MWactivists undermine the authority of established news organizations as a principal

source of social facts.

The last element, timing, is based on a perceived norm stipulating that news

organizations define the relevancy of a specific social fact by locating it on a timeline.

New events represented in established newspapers and broadcast news bulletins are

those that either took place recently or were considered new by the journalists/editors

reporting them.

In their enactments with the online platform, MW members challenge this norm

by posting information regarding new and old events simultaneously on their website.

Their ability to provide constant reports of harsh events and the publics ability toconsume the accumulated reports at all times enable both sides to challenge the

power of professional journalists to define the temporal relevancy of occurrences

presented in the public domain.

Sustaining/challenging social structures

Below, I reveal that while undermining the exclusive role that mainstream news

organizations play in constructing public visibility of social reality, MW mem-

bers simultaneously sustain structures that limit their mediation of marginalized

experiences of suffering.By posting their own reports on events they witnessed firsthand at their website,

MW activists challenge the structures associated with the modern era, according to

which only a select few professionals in mainstream news organizations construct

and sustain the frames in which experiences of the social occur. Nevertheless,

by dedicating their online activity to the publication of journalistic reports, they

reinforce the fundamental boundary between public and private realities, wherein

the latter, defined by those operating in the media, are placed outside media frames

and hence achieve no visibility and remain as if they had never occurred. This

phenomenon becomes even more prominent in the groups decision to post news


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reports produced solely by mainstream media organizationsnotably press and

television bulletinsat their website, alongside their own testimony.

Furthermore, although they expose marginalized realities of evil and suffering,

MW members do not challenge the basic conception of naming, according to

which media organizations function as a principal source of social facts. In spite

of their attempts to contest the exclusivity of professional journalists by facilitating

public visibility of neglected social reality, in effect they sustain the symbolic

hierarchy between media personnel (themselves included) who mediate social facts

and ordinary people who do not: At their website, they insist on presenting

facts, thereby maintaining structures associated with modern journalism, according

to which the journalists principal professional function is to disseminate evidence

rather than personal experiences (Schudson, 1978, 2001), as stated in About Us: We

regularly document what we see and hear. MW activists embrace this journalistic

ethos even though they act within a digital nonbounded platform that tolerates andeven demands presentation of a personal story that comprises private experiences

and sentiments (Pickerill, 2004).

By constructing a media frame in which a marginalized reality of suffering is

presented, the activists also obscure the boundaries between professional journalists

operating in the seemingly glamorous media world and ordinary people located

outside this world. By posting their reports on the harsh realities they observed,

however, the activists maintain this structural rift by excluding the Palestinians (the

victims) from the media world they establish. Like professional journalists, they too

maintain boundaries between themselves and individuals whom the media represent

but deny self-representation in the media frame. Significantly, the MW websiteemphasizes that the activists, like professional journalists, disseminate reports based

on firsthand knowledge. Nevertheless, they exclude the testimonies of the Palestinians

who endure the mental and physical pain reported from the frame they create. The

activists thus accept the customary assumption that the experiences of the represented

victims will gain credibility and authority only if mediated by journalists who have

not undergone those experiencesin this case, the activists themselves.

As discussed above, MW members maintain daily presenceat military checkpoints

at which the reported immoral acts occur. By grounding their online journalistic

activity in firsthand observation, they undermine the traditional power structure

of allocation, according to which professional witnessing agents are present at theplace where a certain event occurs and consequently act as the sole mediators

of knowledge regarding it. In opting for on-location observation, the activists also

undermine the exclusive position of official sources in attaining access to the locations

in which events occurred and reporting them to professional journalists. By their

actions, however, MW members sustain the traditional conception of the allocation

dimension by preserving the symbolic boundary that they and the mainstream media

create between the place from which evidence is collected and the places in which it

is consumed. Like professional journalists, MW activists produce symbolic content

at a website perused in the environments of their audiences, thus preserving the


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symbolic border between the exciting media worldin which events that matter

occurand the tedious world of ordinary people where nothing happens. It is

precisely by insisting on reporting on events from the places they occur an activity

that ostensibly challenges the exclusive role of professional journaliststhat the

women of MW strengthen the conservative conception according to which slices of

reality appearing in media frames are collected from the places where they occurred

and from which ordinary people (the audiences) are absent.

This symbolic rift is further reinforced because MW members, whose activities

underscore the significance of being present at events, eliminate the testimonies

of others (soldiers, for example)who also witnessed the events reported first-

handfrom the media space they establish. The activists thus sustain the existing

division wherein mediators of social reality are located at the places events occur but

do not play an active part in the occurrences they observe.

Conclusions

In adapting Anthony Giddens (1984) Structuration Theory to research on use of

networked digital technologies, I attempted to show how individual enactments with

these devices facilitate both the conservation and the diversion of social structures

reflected and created in the journalistic environment.

Giddens(1984)dualityofstructureconceptprovedusefulherebecausethismodel

resolves a fundamental division concerning the classic agent/structure dichotomy.

Giddens argued that when human agents carry out their actions, they draw on the

existing social structure; human action, however, also simultaneously produces (andreproduces) social structures. Hence the structure, according to Giddens, is both

enabling and disabling.

Giddens Structuration Theory was adopted by Wanda Orlikowskis (2000) who

framed the role of technology in terms of mutual interaction between human agents

and technology, thus declaring it to be structurally and socially constructed. In her

practice lens model for studying technology in organization, she underlined the

following constituents: (a) technology is affected only by creative human action;

(b) technology facilitates (and constrains) certain types of activity; (c) when acting

on technology, human agents are influenced by the organizational properties of their

settings, relying on existing reservoirs of knowledge, resources, and norms to performtheir journalistic work; and (d) when human agents employ technology, their actions

impact the institutional properties of their organizations by either reinforcing or

transforming them.

Predicting on Orlikowskis (2000) practice lens model, I focused on the online

activities of members of Machsom Watch. By opting for an examination of the

activists activities instead of examining consumption patterns, for example, I showed

how their enactment with the technology at hand undermines the structures that

reinforce the power of mainstream media organizations to construct public visibility

of social reality (Couldry, 2000; Thompson, 1995). By being present at military


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checkpoints in the Occupied Territories, observing the events as they occur, writing

personal reports, and posting them on their website, members of this organization,

through the very act of reporting, expose a marginalized social reality. In testifying

to this reality of wrongdoing and agony, the activists challenge exclusion of these

experiences and allow their return to the collective consciousness, which in turnmakes it possible to change realities.

By applying works on structuration to technology in the journalism environment,

I also demonstrated, however, that while drawing public attention to a marginalized

reality of suffering and evil, MW members simultaneously support the structures

that hinder their activities by legitimizing the conventional practices of mainstream

news organizations and naturalizing their representations of evil and suffering.

Notes

1 The term was introduced by Wanda Orlikowski (2000), who intended it in theconventional sense of constituting, acting, performing (Oxford English Dictionary).

2 The journalist is defined in this essay as a person who collects information firsthand with

the aim of presenting it to a public via various technologies, such as print, radio,

television, and the Internet. Journalism is thus defined according to the goal of the

individual who undertakes it and not according to the medium in which that individual

manifests professional affiliation or training. See, for example, Prof. Thomas Goldsteins

declaration of April 8, 2008 before a California court: http://www.eff.org/cases/apple-v-

does/attachments/declaration-professor-thomas-goldstein

3 The various dimensions of the medias power to construct social reality (Ashuri, 2011;

Couldry, 2000) are relevant mainly to Giddens and Orlokowskis conceptions ofnorms and interpretative scheme and will thus be presented primarily in the second

and third parts of the empirical section.

4 The website was accessed between July 2009 and May 2011.

5 A few reports (from different checkpoints) are published on the website daily. As a

detailed analysis of all reports is beyond the scope of this study, I used reports published

on days selected at random.

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Tamar Ashuri

Ben-Gurion

Giddens1984

Orlikowski2000

Couldry2000

Machsom Watch

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Le journalisme activiste : lutilisation des technologies numriques et lbranlement des

structures

Tamar Ashuri

Cet article explore les manires dont les interactions entre les humains et les technologies

en rseau facilitent et restreignent lmergence de structures sociales alimentant les

connaissances et lexprience publiques. Grce ladaptation de la thorie de la

structuration de Giddens (1984) et lextension de cette perspective la technologie

(Orlikowski, 2000), ltude examine la manire par laquelle linvestissement auprs des

technologies en rseau par des gens en-dehors des principales organisations mdiatiques

reproduit les structures qui neutralisent la capacit des institutions mdiatiques

construire la ralit sociale, de mme que la manire par laquelle leurs actions produisent

simultanment de nouvelles structures sociales (Couldry, 2000). Ltude est fonde sur

lanalyse des activits en ligne de membres de Machsom Watch une organisation de

femmes qui surveille les droits humains des Palestiniens aux postes de contrle de

larme isralienne.

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AktivistenJournalismus:DieNutzungdigitalerTechnologienzurUntergrabungvonStrukturen

DieserArtikeluntersucht,wiemenschlicheInteraktionenmitNetzwerktechnologiendie

HerausbildungsozialerStrukturen,dieffentlichesWissenundErfahrungnhren,frdertund

einschrnkt.WiradaptierenGiddens(1984)Strukturationstheorieunderweiterndieseumeine

Technologieperspektive(Orlikowski,2000),umdieArtundWeisezuuntersuchen,mitderdie

EinbindungvonNetzwerktechnologiendurchPersonenauerhalbderMainstream

NachrichtenorganisationenStrukturenreproduziert,diedieMachtderMedieninstitutioneneine

sozialeRealittzukonstruieren,neutralisiert.Auerdembetrachtenwir,aufwelcheArtundWeise

ihreHandlungengleichzeitigneuesozialeStrukturen(Couldry,2000)produzieren.DieStudiebasiert

aufeinerAnalysederOnlineAktivittenvonMitgliedernderMachsomWatch,einerOrganisation

vonFrauen,diedieMenschenrechtevonPalstinensernanGrenzbergngenderisraelischenArmee

berwacht.

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Mediando el Multiculturalismo: La Representacin de los Musulmanes Britnicos en losMedios Estadounidenses, 1997 2009

Resumen

Este ensayo considera la integracin de los Musulmanes en la sociedad Britnica desde la

perspectiva de los medios Estadounidenses. Presenta un asesoramiento longitudinal de

la cobertura de los medios impresos acerca de la integracin de los Musulmanes en lasociedad Britnica. Es aparente que los medios de los EE.U.U. revisan las polticas

multiculturales Britnicas a travs de una ideologa hegemnica de integracin en la cual

la asimilacin es juzgada como superior a la multiculturalidad. Los casos, que sontomados de tres perodos (19972001, 20012005, y 20052009), demostrarn una

evolucin de la cobertura de los medios Estadounidenses en la fisonoma cambiante

internacional y domestica de las percepciones del Islam y la integracin de losMusulmanes.

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Activist Journalism: Using Digital Technologies and Undermining Structures

:

Tamar Ashuri

.

(1994) (W. J. Orlikowski, 2000),

(N. Couldry, 2000).

Machsom Watch.

.

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